The Lancing and Fishersgate parties will start at 11a.m and Shoreham's at 1.00p.m.
All you have to do is turn up and prepare to be dazzled by acrobats, street performers, live musicians, dancers and a giant snail.
Here's Shorehams' line-up.

With Shoreham's French and Artisan Markets starting at 9.00 a.m, you may as well make a day of it in town.
Unfortunately, half-term has arrrived with unseemly haste, so I'll be back again in a fortnight's time with a day in the life of a martial artist.
Thanks for dropping by.
Ta-ra for now.

Thursday, 15 May 2014

Hello and thank you for your positive comments on the first "day in the life of." It's time now for the second, so over to you Tanya.

Tanya Williams lives in London with her husband,
Tim, and their three children. She’s currently studying for an MA in Human
Rights.

“ I get up and shower at 6.45 a.m. dress, then it's household chores before I ferry the kids to the station at 7.30 a.m. At 8 a.m. I leave for University. I often cycle because I’m training for a 54km
walk in Bhutan in October for the Australian Himalayan Foundation, and I need to
get fit.

When I arrive at Uni, I buy a half
price newspaper from the Uni shop and enjoy it with a coffee then I check my emails before lectures start at 9.00 a.m.

I
decided to go back to Uni for lots of reasons. I’d been doing a routine job for
six years which was never going to change, and my applications for more
interesting jobs had been unsuccessful. Our youngest was about to start
secondary school and our parenting time is now more crises based than responding
to daily needs. Danielle laPorte’s, “The Fire Starter Sessions,” inspired me, but most of all, last summer, I fulfilled a long-held ambition to back
pack around Cambodia for a month.

In Cambodia, I met a bunch of NGO
workers who were half my age and doing really interesting work. It was like
looking through a telescope backwards at my own life and it looked too small
and constricted. The trip made me realise that I didn't have to settle for a
boring job, that I could literally pack my bags and move on, so when I came
home, I resigned.

I’ve
always been political and my background is in languages, law and journalism so
I signed up for a one year full time MA course in Human Rights.

The last
time I was at University was almost 20 years ago, and this time it’s less fun.
The buildings are run down and there are poorer facilities. The Uni has low
expectations and the lecturers are on strike and angry about pay and they don't
mark our work sometimes which seems unfair. The students have loans and debts
and they also have to do internships all the time. It's exploitative, but it seems
the only way to get interviews. Still, I love being around people who think ideas
about the world matter, who can criticize the War on Terror without being accused
of being a leftie or worse.

The
study is more collaborative than I'm used to. We have to do group work and
present it to the class. The students present very well and make PowerPoint
displays in minutes, but I don't really like it. You only really learn the bit
you're presenting and if the other groups don't do theirs well, you never get
to learn about that area. Technology also effects teaching styles. The laptop
screen has priority and people don't look lecturers in the eye.

Although I’m much older than the
others, age doesn’t seem to create a divide. Any divisions are more to do with
students not being native English speakers. They participate less, either
because they are shy or don’t understand.

I can speak French, Greek, and German and I’m learning Arabic and, for me, language is at the heart of
everything. It forms how you see the world. If you don't speak the language, you can only engage
with more educated people, usually men, so you might not get a true picture of women’s
concerns. I went to the biggest mosque in Europe, which is in New Malden, and I spoke to the girls there. They didn’t care about wearing a niqab or a burka. They had more important
issues to worry about, like Sharia law and inheritance rules which entrench
discrimination.

I study at Uni or quiet spaces away
from home. I’ve no dedicated workspace at home, so if I study there, I’m constantly
packing up my papers so the family can use the computer or kitchen table. Also, I don't switch off very easily once I've started on a topic. I get very into it and feel irritated when I have to pack up and do household
stuff.

I study every day except Tuesdays. That's when
I work at Liberty, writing legal advice. It brings human rights
into solving real world problems but squeezing five days study into four can be
tricky.

“My”
day usually ends about 4.30 p.m. when the kids come home from school. I lay out
snacks and drinks and start preparing supper so we can eat at six. After that I
may read or watch TV, unless I’m out supporting the Green Party. I go and hand out
leaflets at the station or attend public meetings to support our MEP
candidates. I did it twice before for the Libdems, but I became politically
homeless after they joined the coalition in 2010. It’s nice to be involved
again and I’m now a Green Party candidate in this year's local elections.

During the winter months, I help at a
local night shelter for homeless people. The temperature has to be below
freezing before it’s opened and the charity will decide that at 2.00 p.m based on Met weather forecasts. That’s when I
get the call to come in for a shift.

When
I graduate I'm going to work on improving Islamic women’s human rights. It's a
disgrace that some countries which sign up to human rights treaties are allowed
to ignore it by saying, “It's our
culture” to marry 8 year old girls to 50 year old men, or censor the press, or use
child labour.

Our Human Rights tutors tell us not to get overwhelmed by the terrible stuff that's going on in the world. We should just pick a small bit to tackle. That will be my small bit, but it's not small to the people I'll be working with.

Until
then, it’s lights out at 10.00 a.m."

Thank you Tanya. I look forward to seeing you back here to tell us about your trip to Bhutan. In the meantime, next week they'll be a short break from the series so I can bring you news of the Adur Festival street parties. Until then, thanks for dropping by and have a great week.Ta-ra

Wednesday, 7 May 2014

Hello and welcome to my blog. I'm delighted to launch the first in a new series of, "A day in the life of," and today it's a day in the life of a commerical airline pilot.

Richard Coward is a Training Captain on the Airbus A320.

He has 30
years flying experience and lives in Shoreham with his wife and son.

“I’m a freelance Training Captain and I train
pilots across the world, either in the simulator or on the line. I’m currently training
Serbian pilots on the line, so I’ve been seconded to the airline to train them
whilst we are flying the normal passenger schedule.

I normally check-in an hour and thirty minutes
before the scheduled departure time and meet the other pilot. This is often the
first time we’ve ever met, but together we’ll go through the paperwork, such as flight
plans, weather, and NOTAMS.

The flight plans include the expected weight of the
aircraft; how much fuel we’ll need; the route that we’re taking; how
long that’s going to take; how high we’ll be flying and at what sort of speed. We’ll look at the weather so we can plan ahead
and avoid things like thunderstorm clouds. We read the NOTAMs, Notice to Airmen,
which gives us information about what's not available at the airport or en-route,
for instance, to avoid a certain area because there’s an airshow or a military
exercise.

Some airlines also provide a maintenance state of
the aircraft, so we’ll check that and make allowances for defects. A typical
example would be if they’ve de-activated a brake on one of the wheels. We’ll still have three, but it will effect the takeoff and landing performance.

After we’ve gone through the documents, we'll meet the cabin
crew and give them the information about the flight and then about an hour
before departure, we'll go out to the aircraft together.

When we get on the flight deck, we’ll put all the data
into the onboard navigation computers. We'll ensure that every bag is loaded and in the
right place, check that there’s enough fuel and that there are no further
technical problems with the aircraft. Once the crew
has confirmed that everyone is onboard and it is secure in the cabin, the
final bit of paperwork is signed and left behind. Then we'll close the door and go on our way.

During the flight, we'll record our flight time and note the
time and fuel as we pass waypoints. We'll check the weather ahead, look out for other
aircraft and talk to Air Traffic Control. As a training captain, I’ll look at the pilot’s training file to see what subject matters we need to
talk about, plus, at some point, we'll have to eat and drink.

When we finally get to our destination, they’ll be
more paperwork and we’ll refuel and stretch our legs while the aircraft is cleaned. Once the passengers and bags are loaded, we’ll be off again. For short-haul operations, the
typical turnaround time between landing and taking off is usually about 45 minutes and crews will do between two and four
flights a day.

When
we get back to base, the aircraft will usually be handed over to the engineers. If there
have been any problems we'll have recorded them in the technical log, then it’ll be back to
the office for another 30-40 minutes to do the final paperwork. It’s a long, long, day and tiredness and fatigue are major
concerns in the industry.

Our overriding purpose is to operate safely, and modern
pilots are more like flight safety managers than they’ve ever been before, so there’s
been a much bigger drive towards managing our temperaments.

Our temperament has to be tailored towards being
safe, and once safe, to follow the law, then passenger comfort
comes next. If your temperament is such that you’ll always put the law or
passenger comfort first, and risk safety, it'll start going wrong. We’ve seen
this over and over again in accident reports.

To operate
safely, we also have to make sure that the crew work as a team. The crew, which
includes us, may not even know each other when we check-in, so the Captain has to break down barriers quickly to create that team. The beauty of the airline industry is that the crew are all trained to follow the airlines' Standard Operating Procedures, (SOPs), and they are followed, to all intents and purposes, every day. Therefore, if a crewmember, regardless of whether they are new to the job or have 20 years experience, decides that something isn't right, they should go and inform somebody. Whether or not they do, depends on whether there is an environment of equality, trust, and support onboard. Unfortunately, failures to follow SOPs sometimes go
unchallenged and it's usually for cultural
reasons. For instance, I’ve been in Asia and seen a Captain make a mistake. The
first officer spotted it too, but didn’t correct him because it would have caused
the Captain to lose face. In Eastern Europe, the prevailing attitude seemed to be that if somebody had out ranked you in the military, they believed they were right and expected you to follow their lead, irrespective of your position in the
company. Cultural issues like that should never interfere with flight safety
and it’s one of my jobs to make that clear in a culturally sensitive way.

Most pilots have a passion and pride about flying, but
it’s not the healthiest of jobs and the closest thing I’ve got to a bedtime
routine is, get undressed, wash teeth, check time of wake up call and crash out. Even if it’s 2 o’clock in the afternoon!”

I hope you found that interesting. Thank you Richard for contributing to the series and thank you for dropping by. I'll see you next week with another "day in the life of."

Liz Coward - author and scriptwriter

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My first book "Blood and Bandages, Fighting for life in the RAMC Field Ambulance 1940-1946, was published by Sabrestorm Publishing in Spring 2017. I co-wrote Alison Lapper's essay on "What makes us human?" (broadcast on Jeremy Vine show 16th October 2013 and published in the New Statesman (uncredited) in July.) I am a regular contributor to the Beach News.